Friday, April 13, 2007

Commandant Conway: Anbar has turned the corner

Above: Neighbors gather at the bomb crater left after a March 22nd airstrike on a house in Ramadi, which killed two children. Left: Anbar is an overwhelmingly Sunni Arab province, the largest in Iraq. Its capital is Ar Ramadi, which along with Fallujah is considered a wellspring of the Sunni insurgency. Of the 35,000 troops in Anbar, 25,000 are Marines.

The long U.S. effort to stabilize western Iraq, a hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency, has reached a turning point with new prospects for success, the top Marine general said Monday.

“I think, in that area, we have turned the corner,” Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in an Associated Press interview as he flew back to Washington after four days in Iraq.

His assessment of Anbar province marks a sharp departure from the view that prevailed for much of the past four years, a time of deadly battles with the Sunni insurgency and of local alienation from the Shiite-dominated national government in Baghdad.

As recently as last fall, the top Marine intelligence officer in Anbar reported dim prospects for securing the province and little likelihood of the U.S. military persuading the Sunnis — who lost national power when Saddam Hussein fell — to quit the insurgency.